Genrefuck is a double bill that opened on Wednesday at Buddies in Bad Times. It consists of two one performer shows; Reina written by Augusto Bitter and performed by Jaime Lujan, and Never Walk Alone written and performed by Julie Phan.
Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold is the latest and, probably, the last show from Art of Time Ensemble. It’s a bold and successful attempt at updating Stravinsky’s iconic work. The music is all Stravinsky but Titilope Sonuga’s libretto is new. It preserves the basic triad of Narrator, Soldier and the Devil but moves them to WW1 Canada. Our soldier is a Black Canadian of West African extraction who is trying to join the Canadian army, which rejects him because of his skin colour. His faith in his heritage, symbolised by the spirit bird Sankofa, with a little help from the Devil leads to the formation of the 2nd Construction Battalion, a non-combat unit, which was the only way Black Canadians could serve. He survives the war and returns from France to find that the same battles must be fought over (and over, and over) again.
Daniel MacIvor’s Here Lies Henry is the other half of the pair of MacIvor one man shows currently playing at Factory Theatre. It’s quite different from Monster. For starters Damien Atkins plays a single character, Henry “Tom” Gallery rather than the multiple character of Monster. The only things we know for sure about Henry is that he is a liar and he wants, for some reason, to tell us his life story, or rather several versions of it. The only thing he says that we can be fairly sure is true is that you are born, then you do stuff and then you die.
operaramblings 